Oleg Gazenko : biography

December 12, 1918 - November 17, 2007

Incorporates information from the corresponding article in the Russian Wikipedia

Lieutenant General Oleg Georgovitch Gazenko (Russian language: Олег Георгиевич Газенко) (December 12, 1918 &ndash; November 17, 2007) was a Russian scientist, general officer in the Soviet Air Force and the former director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow. One of the leading scientists behind the Soviet animals in space programmes, he selected and trained Laika, the dog who flew on the Sputnik 2 mission.

Later life

Gazenko was elected president of the All-Union (now Russia) Physiological Society named Pavlov in 1987, and retired the following year with the rank of lieutenant-general in the medical services of the Soviet Air Force.

A deputy of the USSR from 1989-1991, he was a member of the Committee on Science and Education of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and was a member of the Commission which investigated the events in Tbilisi on April 9, 1989.

He was an adviser to the Russian Academy of Sciences at the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation "Institute of Biomedical Problems."

In 1998 Gazenko expressed regret for the manner of Laika's death:

"Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog."

Until his death, he acted as an advisor to Anatoly Grigoriev, the current Director of the Institute. He had been appointed to the position of Academician in the Russian Academy of Science. Gazenko died on November 17, 2007; he is buried in the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

Early life and Great Patriotic War

Gazenko was born on December 12, 1918 in the village of Mykolaivka, Stavropol Territory to George and Larissa Gazenko, née Nikitin.

In 1941, Gazenko graduated from the Military Department of the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute as a medic 3rd rank (captain in the medical service). He and his whole class were immediately sent to the front. During the war, he served as the chief of an army hospital, 197th Battalion airfield services of the 15th Air Army in the West, South-Western, Bryansk, Baltic and Belorussian fronts, receiving several decorations for his service.

Space research career

From 1955 Gazenko worked in the Soviet space program, focusing his efforts on research in the field of space biology and medicine relevant to weightlessness and orbital flight.

He took a prominent part in a number of biological tests regarding space flight projects. He trained and supervised the animals used in the Sputnik 2 project. Spuntik 2 was the second spacecraft launched into Earth orbit, on November 3, 1957, and the first to carry a living animal, a dog named Laika.

Gazenko continued his work as part of the team behind the Vostok program. He supervised and trained the animals used in the 1960 vostok prototype flight. In the aftermath of its failure, he adopted a survivor of this flight - a small dog named Krasavka (Красавка, "Little Beauty") also known as Kometka (Кометка, "Little Comet"). Krasavka went on to have puppies and continued living with Gazenko and his family until her death 14 years later.http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/the-remarkable-and-censored-siberian-adventure-of-stray-dog-cosmonauts-comet-and-shutka/ Gazenko was also directly involved in training the first human cosmonauts of the Vostok 1 project, including Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin himself jokingly referred to it by saying: "I don't know whether I'm the first man in space, or the last dog in space."http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2244784/

In 1969, by the decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers Gazenko was assigned to the 3rd General Directorate of the Ministry of Health as Director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems. His research of that period was focused on basic problems of space biomedicine. The study of the impact of zero gravity on living organisms allowed justification of the principles and methods of protecting humans from the unfavourable effects of space flight and creation of a system of supporting the health and productivity of space crews before, during, and after the flight.From 1978 Gazenko was involved in developing the system of physiological, health, and psychological measures for crews in prolonged space flights and after return to earth.